The Context of Women’s Work and Household Labour in Japan

What are the conditions that determine the scope and scale of unpaid household labour over the course of economic development and industrialisation? This chapter argues, on the basis of the Japanese case, that a relatively equal distribution of control over cultivated land, combined with relative security of land tenure and supported by communal institutions, created the framework within which small-scale cultivation and a high level of self-sufficiency in consumption goods persisted, in the face of the wider commercialisation and growth of the economy. This depended on the flexible availability of household labour, much of it female and individually ‘unpaid’. The institutions of rural life enabled households to adjust their labour forces by means of birth control, adoption, marriage and divorce, rather than resort to the labour market. With the spread of labour-using, yield-increasing agricultural techniques and opportunities for manufacturing activity that could be fitted round them, the importance of the female members of the household labour force increased, as reflected in family planning and strategic marriage/divorce practice. As a result, Japan was able to pursue a ‘housework-intensive’ development path within which household-based female workers played a central, even if largely unmeasurable and unrecognised, role.